Marketing Pilgrim

The Gmail Team rolled out a really cool new feature to their Gmail services: you can now have your whereabouts added to your signature at the time your email was sent. I’m sure half of you are thinking “that’s awesome!” while the other half are saying, “who cares?” Google is able to do this through the use of IP detection.

As Gmail Software Engineer, and writer of the script, Marco Bonechi points out, this is the perfect solution for those of us who are frequent travelers. I think this is a great tool for salesman who are frequently returning emails from all over the world. It gives clients and customers an idea of how big your business is. If anything, I would think it is impressive to see a new location from fellow business associates.

It will be interesting to see how people utilize this feature and take it to the next level.

To enable your location in your signature:

• Head to the Settings > Labs in your Gmail account (or just click on the green beaker)
• Find Location in Signature, select Enable and save changes.
• Go to your signature preferences (under Settings > General) and check the box next to “Append your location to the signature.”

If you’re location isn’t as accurate as you’d like, Marco recommends having the latest version of Gears that supports the location module. That will allow Gmail to use WiFi access point signals to get a more accurate read on your location.